


Home of the Frail

by FoxofSpades



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxofSpades/pseuds/FoxofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Reichenbach, John goes home, and finds a clue. Genius, after all, needs an audience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home of the Frail

The door to 221B seems to loom over him, dwarfing his already short stature into miniscule proportions.

John can barely turn the knob, fingers sliding over it, slick with blood that isn’t his own, but can’t bring himself to wash off. It takes a few tries but he does it eventually, taking stuttering steps slowly inside, immediately greeted by the sound of Mrs. Hudson sobbing in the kitchen.

He ignores her. He ignores everything but the steps as he walks up them, gripping the railing. Will he start limping again, now? Will he need his cane?

The door to their- _his_ home greets him vaguely, and he can’t help but wonder if it is in shock as well, too stunned to be properly menacing like the front door.

He is already losing his mind, he thinks, fumbling another doorknob into cooperating. He feels, distantly, cold tears sliding down his face, but only through a fog. He takes one step into the flat and gazes around, cataloging everything.

He wonders, as he takes in the paper on the chair, the cold cup of tea, the petree dishes on the table, fingers in the sink knife on the mantelpiece robe over the chairbulletsinthewall _lettersonthedesk-unopened bedroomdoorcrackedviolinonthetable,_ if this is what it’s like to be Sherlock.

_Skull_ , his mind supplies as he stares at the mantelpiece. Genius needs an audience. The skull is gone.

John goes through the motions of making a cup of tea, but feels ill when he tries to take a sip. He slips into a fitful, sick doze in Sherlock’s chair.

He wakes, some minutes later, when his subconscious realizes what he noticed earlier. He stands, no, _bursts_ out of his chair and over to the mantelpiece, running his fingers over the space where the skull used to be.

Was it there before? It was, he had been talking to it. _Sillysillysilly John, the skull is gone_ , sings his mind. You need sleep, but you need good sleep. Look at this, deduce this, and you’ll have it.

The skull is gone. Genius needs an audience. The frailty of Sherlock.

John, very carefully, schools his features into passiveness. Tomorrow he’ll sweep the flat for bugs, and he’ll do the dishes, and take a week or so off work to keep up appearances, because he’s mourning. Or, he’s supposed to be.

John steps into the bathroom, turns on the shower, strips, gets in the shower. Then, as the blood runs down the drain, he lets himself cry and laugh and scream and shout, where no one, even if they wanted to, could tell if it is from joy or sorrow.

It is from joy. Tomorrow he’ll act the part for whoever’s watching, might have to do it for months after that, but he’s found the clue Sherlock left him, and he knows his madman is coming home. 


End file.
